This Sunday is Black Books day at the Black Box on Hill Street, Belfast, and The Black Panel, aka Andy Luke and myself, will once again be selling a selection of comics by the finest writers and artists in Ireland, north and south. We have some new additions to our stock – books by Bridgeen Gillespie, Rob Curley and Gerry Hunt. Click here to find out more!

The Black Panel, aka Andy Luke and myself, will be selling our selection of small press comics by Irish artists (north and south) at the Black Books book fair thing at the Black Box tomorrow – and for the first time, we have books by Archie Templar!

This Sunday (7 March) is Black Market day at the Black Box, and they now have a Facebook Group. The Black Panel (me and Andy and a selection of small press comics by Irish artists) will be there as usual. We’ve had a restock from Phil Barrett, one of our best sellers, including more copies of the sold out Black Shapes and the new-to-us Matter Summer Special of 2006. Lots of fine work by lots of fine artists from all over Ireland, north and south, for your delectation. Your attendance is hereby requested.

For my readers in and around Belfast, don’t forget the Black Panel, Andy’s and my stall selling Irish-produced small press comics, will be at the Black Books book fair this Sunday, at the Black Box on Hill Street in the Cathedral Quarter. Here’s Andy’s write-up of the last one on Alltern-8, and a photo of me behind the stall I’ve stolen from said write-up, showing some of the variety of marvellous comics we have on sale.

Andy and I will once again be running the Black Panel small press comics stall at the Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast (it’s in the Cathedral Quarter – here’s the Google map) on Sunday. As well as our own, we’ll have comics by Patrick Lynch, Philip Barrett, Deirdre de Barra, Hilary Lawler and the rest of the Longstone Comics crowd, the Berserker Comics boys, Stephen Downey, John Robbins, Gar Shanley and Cathal Duggan, Alan Nolan, Deirdre Ruane, Tommie Kelly, Edel Ryder and Gareth Hanrahan, Davy Francis, Aidan Courtney and friends as Gaeilge, Lee Grace and his band of illustrators and graphic designers, and, new to the Black Panel this month, Malachy Coney!  With variety like that there’ll be something to appeal to just about anybody. Hopefully see yez all there then.

Andy Luke’s second column at Alltern8 is up, in which he recommends some (mostly) small press comics as Christmas presents – including my own Ness.  Another he recommends is One Word for Everything, a collection of strips from Deirdre Ruane’s webcomic Wasted Epiphanies, which came as a pleasant surprise to me as I didn’t know she was putting her comics online.  A lot odd observations on mundane things from ususual perspectives (like the example below), and a few recurring characters, like Tempin’ Bear, a polar bear who, since his ice floe melted, has had to seek alternative employment in various unsuitable office jobs, all done in a free-and-easy drawing style. Great stuff, stick it in your RSS reader today!

My esteemed colleague Andy Luke, previously of Caption and London Underground Comics and my co-stallholder at Independents Day in Dublin and the Black Market in Belfast, is now blogging at Alltern8, and his first post is about those very experiences, and the DIY comics scene in general. Here’s Andy (left) with Belfast comics elder statesman Davy Francis at the Black Market last Sunday.

Next Sunday, 6 December, is the monthly Black Market, from noon to 5pm at the Black Box, Hill Street (in the Cathedral Quarter), Belfast. Their blurb says it’s “a celebration of creativity and the DIY spirit, a marketplace showcasing the work of independent artists, designers, illustrators and crafters alongside bountiful stalls from collectors of records, books and vintage clothing”, and Andy Luke and I will have a stall, selling a selection of Irish-produced small press comics, including our own.

Admission is free, and since it’s the festive season there’ll be “sweet and savoury homebaked/cooked delights available”, and “music from guest DJs”. I hope we’l see loads of you there.

On Saturday (28 March) I shall be exhibiting at the UK Web and Mini Comix Thing (which I like to think is named after the Old Norse word for an assembly rather than just, well, a thing) at Queen Mary University in London. I’ll have copies of Ness, the first print issue of The Cattle Raid of Cooley, and my 24 Hour Comic to sell, and there’s lots of other interesting and talented cartoonists exhibiting as well – from Sarah McIntyre (Vern & Lettuce) to Paul Rainey (There’s No Time Like the Present) to Kate Beaton (Hark, a Vagrant!) to Rene Engström (Anders Loves Maria) to David O’Connell (Tozo) – and  a healthy Irish contingent, including Patrick Lynch and Katie Blackwood, Ronan Kennedy, Al Nolan and Cliodhna Lyons.  Should be a good show, so if you’re in the vicinity why not come and say hello?

In other news, the great Davy Francis, frighteningly youthful elder statesman of the Belfast cartooning scene, was doing caricatures for Comic Relief the week before last.  Here’s one he did of me.

Stephen Downey, a Belfast comics artist and a mate from the monthly Belfast comics creator meetups in the Garrick bar, has been working on Cancertown for what seems like forever. It was originally going to be a limited series before the publishers decided that was commercial suicide, and it’ll be going direct to graphic novel when it’s done.  It’s a sort of supernatural horror fantasy thing written by a guy called Cy Dethan, and we’ve been getting previews of the pages as they’re drawn.

From what I can gather the main character has a foot in two worlds, the real one (drawn in ink) and another one full of grotesques, monsters and giant eyeballs (drawn in pencil). I was particularly impressed by the sequence where the writer, as comics writers do, asked Stephen to draw a character becoming a whirlwind of daggers – not metaphorically, actually turn into a spiral storm made up of countless pointy metal weapons – and Stephen not only did it, but did it so you went “wow”.  Stephen draws in a kind of heightened realist style that would fit in quite nicely at places like Vertigo, teaches Irish traditional music, and talks faster than the human mind can comfortably process.

And he’s done an interview about his process and inspirations over at Red Eye, his publisher’s blog, and he’s been good enough to give me a wee plug. Favour returned, and I’ll keep you posted when the book comes out.